Ashtead is a large village in the Mole Valley district of Surrey, England, approximately 15.5 mi (25 km) south of central London. Primarily a commuter settlement, Ashtead is on the single-carriageway A24 between Epsom and Leatherhead. The village is on the northern slopes of the North Downs and is in the catchment area of The Rye, a tributary of the River Mole.
The Etruria Works was a ceramics factory opened by Josiah Wedgwood in 1769 in a district of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England, which he named Etruria. The factory ran for 180 years, as part of the wider Wedgwood business.
Bernard Howell Leach, was a British studio potter and art teacher. He is regarded as the "Father of British studio pottery".
Percy Metcalfe, CVO, RDI, was an English artist, sculptor and designer. He is recognised mostly for his coin designs and his contribution to the Ashtead Pottery Collection.
Tunstall is one of the six towns that, along with Burslem, Longton, Fenton, Hanley and Stoke-upon-Trent, amalgamated to form the City of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England. It was one of the original six towns that federated to form the city. Tunstall is the most northern, and fourth largest town of the Potteries. It is situated in the very northwest of the city borough, with its north and west boundaries being the city limit. It stands on a ridge of land between Fowlea Brook to the west and Scotia Brook to the east, surrounded by old tile making and brick making sites, some of which date back to the Middle Ages.
Studio pottery is pottery made by professional and amateur artists or artisans working alone or in small groups, making unique items or short runs. Typically, all stages of manufacture are carried out by the artists themselves. Studio pottery includes functional wares such as tableware and cookware, and non-functional wares such as sculpture, with vases and bowls covering the middle ground, often being used only for display. Studio potters can be referred to as ceramic artists, ceramists, ceramicists or as an artist who uses clay as a medium.
Longton is one of the six towns which amalgamated to form the county borough of Stoke-on-Trent in 1910, along with Hanley, Tunstall, Fenton, Burslem and Stoke-upon-Trent.
Wedgwood is an English fine china, porcelain and luxury accessories manufacturer that was founded on 1 May 1759 by the potter and entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood and was first incorporated in 1895 as Josiah Wedgwood and Sons Ltd. It was rapidly successful and was soon one of the largest manufacturers of Staffordshire pottery, "a firm that has done more to spread the knowledge and enhance the reputation of British ceramic art than any other manufacturer", exporting across Europe as far as Russia, and to the Americas. It was especially successful at producing fine earthenware and stoneware that were accepted as equivalent in quality to porcelain but were considerably cheaper.
Palissy was the trade name under which the English firm of A.E. Jones and Sons, of Stoke-on-Trent, marketed their china and pottery. The name was chosen as a tribute to Bernard Palissy, the famous French potter of the 16th century, creator of Palissy ware.
The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia is an art gallery that houses the Australian part of the art collection of the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV).
Ashtead railway station is in Ashtead, Surrey, England. It is 16 miles 19 chains (26.1 km) down the line from London Waterloo.
Mintons was a major company in Staffordshire pottery, "Europe's leading ceramic factory during the Victorian era", an independent business from 1793 to 1968. It was a leader in ceramic design, working in a number of different ceramic bodies, decorative techniques, and "a glorious pot-pourri of styles - Rococo shapes with Oriental motifs, Classical shapes with Medieval designs and Art Nouveau borders were among the many wonderful concoctions". As well as pottery vessels and sculptures, the firm was a leading manufacturer of tiles and other architectural ceramics, producing work for both the Houses of Parliament and United States Capitol.
Gwyn Hanssen Pigott OAM (1935–2013) was an Australian ceramic artist. She was recognized as one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists. By the time she died she was regarded as "one of the world's greatest contemporary potters". She worked in Australia, England, Europe, the USA, New Zealand, Japan and Korea. In a career spanning nearly 60 years, influences from her apprenticeships to English potters were still apparent in her later work. But in the 1980s she turned away from production pottery to making porcelain still-life groups largely influenced by the Italian painter Giorgio Morandi.
Winchcombe Pottery, near Winchcombe in Tewkesbury Borough, North Gloucestershire, is an English craft pottery founded in 1926.
Art pottery is a term for pottery with artistic aspirations, made in relatively small quantities, mostly between about 1870 and 1930. Typically, sets of the usual tableware items are excluded from the term; instead the objects produced are mostly decorative vessels such as vases, jugs, bowls and the like which are sold singly. The term originated in the later 19th century, and is usually used only for pottery produced from that period onwards. It tends to be used for ceramics produced in factory conditions, but in relatively small quantities, using skilled workers, with at the least close supervision by a designer or some sort of artistic director. Studio pottery is a step up, supposed to be produced in even smaller quantities, with the hands-on participation of an artist-potter, who often performs all or most of the production stages. But the use of both terms can be elastic. Ceramic art is often a much wider term, covering all pottery that comes within the scope of art history, but "ceramic artist" is often used for hands-on artist potters in studio pottery.
Donald Gilbert (1900–1961), named Hubert Donald Macgeoch Gilbert at birth, was an English sculptor and modeller. He studied at prestigious art schools in England, Rome and Florence before beginning his career. He did works under his own name, such as commissions for the Adelphi building in London. He also collaborated with his father, Walter Gilbert, a sculptor at H.H. Martyn.
Ian Broun Sprague (1920–1994) was an Australian twentieth-century studio potter, ceramic sculptor and graphic artist. Delayed by the Second World War and a false start in architecture, he spent (broadly) his forties adapting Australian domestic pottery to a Japanese aesthetic of contemplative use; his fifties as a sculptor in two- and three-dimensional pottery; his sixties and seventies making landscape works on paper.
Phoebe Gertrude Stabler was an English artist working across many mediums including metalwork, pottery, enamel and wood in the late nineteenth and early-mid twentieth centuries. "Although Stabler is best known for her pottery figures, during the 1920s and 1930s she was also well known for her stone carvings and was an important contributor to the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, 1924."
Harry Memmott (1921-1991) was an Australian ceramic pottery artist.
